Bradley University’s Dining Services offer unique and affordable meal options to students living on or off-campus.
BY RYAN VALENTINE
PEORIA, ILL.: Bradley University’s dining services offer a variety of food plans aimed to serve both residential students, as well as off-campus and commuter students. Bradley has a partnership with Aramark food services to help manage the dining department. According to Gail Hanson, Director of Food Services at Bradley, Aramark provides various resources to the university with regards to human resources, technology, menu development, purchasing, marketing and national brands.
As for Bradley, Hanson puts in a lot of effort towards collaborating with university administrators and students in order to accommodate them with the best dining experience possible. A lot of factors go into consideration when making decisions to better the system that’s been put in place. Low enrollment for Bradley has been a major impact on the dining budget over the last couple of years, Hanson said.
“When you are trying to offer a wide range of services, but your revenue stream is down hundreds of thousands of dollars each with reduced freshmen classes, this impacts our service times and upsets customers,” Hanson said. “We have to look at service hours because that impacts labor. We have to watch production and consumer waste. We have to review competitive pricing in the market and menu offerings.”
Hanson said variety in the menus, healthier options, more service hours and lower prices are always the hot buttons for students every year. These types of decisions are primarily made in tandem with Gary Anna, Vice President of Business Affairs and Nathan Thomas, Vice President of Student Affairs. Hanson said there is also a food advisory committee made up of students, faculty and staff which meets once a month to discuss issues and changes.
Additionally, trying to figure out how to tailor to upperclassmen students living off-campus can be challenging. To help gain more insight into this matter, Hanson said Dining Services is currently conducting a survey with a group of students to gather better information to meet the needs that they have.
Previous decisions have led to the development of “Moe’s” in Michel Student Center or the more recent “Jamba Juice” in Center Court of Williams Hall. Certain factors are carefully considered by Bradley and the restaurant company’s potentially getting involved and implemented.
“Brands have certain expectations and the size of the institution typically dictates which brands you can have on your campus,” Hanson said. “Many of those options are driven by the potential revenue streams and national brands want to make sure that there is growth for their brand. Also, proximity of the same brand is taken into account and if there is a “Subway” for example within so many miles, then a new one cannot be opened too close due to market saturation.”
Furthermore, market analysis is important for Dining Services to see where they’re at financially compared to other universities. Dining Service uses a list of colleges that Bradley has designated as peer or competitive colleges for comparisons on services, meal plans, menus, nutrition and more.
“Each year we update the analysis and review where we are in the market to determine if we need to make changes and how those changes are going to be covered financially and accepted with our consumer base,” Hanson said.
Options such as BU Bucks, QuickCash and block meal plans are all offered to Bradley students. There are also varying options of block meals that are available for both residential and off-campus students. An example of a residential option Bradley offers is the “120 Block” plan. This plan gives students 120 meals per semester in dining halls, $250 dining dollars and $125 in QuickCash.
These options are very similar among other universities such as Illinois State University. Instead of QuickCash, ISU offers “Flex Dollars” which have the same principles that QuickCash has at Bradley.
There is always room for new ideas and overall improvement. Hanson is aware of that. However, you cannot immediately implement a new idea and expect to see rapid success. It takes time to craft a system that is best suited for everyone.
“We try to create stability in the plans and changing them every year is not a good option,” Hanson said. “We have to see how they work and it takes time to do that correctly.”
What does all of this mean for Bradley and dining? Will we see more recognizable restaurants making their way to the Hilltop, or changes in the various meal plans? Time will tell, and it will be interesting to see what dining services will incorporate, if anything at all, in the years to come.
See below a comparison of Bradley University’s residential/non-residential meal plan options to Illinois State University’s.
